January 12, 2021 • 48 mins
Christina Sass is the co-founder and board member of Andela, a company that recruits the most talented software engineers on the African continent and pairs them with global tech companies as full-time, distributed team members.
In five years, Andela has hired almost 2,000 developers and become known as the "Best Place to Work in Africa," with tech campuses in Lagos, Nairobi, Kampala, and Kigali. Founded on the premise that brilliance is evenly distributed, but opportunity is not, Andela has built one of the world's most selective engineering institutions.
Christina has built education and employment programs in China, Gaza, the West Bank, Kenya, and Nigeria. Prior to co-founding Andela, she directed the Program department of the Clinton Global Initiative and advised the President and CEO of The MasterCard Foundation, a $9B global foundation working to advance education and financial inclusion for youth in Africa.
Christina serves on the Advisory Council of the NYU Stern Center for Business and Human Rights and on the board of the non-profit Global Give Back Circle. Christina's work has been mentioned by Forbes, CNN, The New Yorker, NBC, and WIRED.
She joins us to talk about how traveling and teaching around the world fostered her passion for youth employment, cracking jokes with Bill Gates, and how artificial intelligence will change the future of hiring.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Art of the Hustle is a production of I Heart Radio.
You're listening to the Art of the Hustle, the show
that breaks down how some of the world's most fascinating
people have hustled and learned their way into achieving great things.
(00:21):
I'm your host Jeff Rosenthal, co founder of Summit, and
today on the show, I had the pleasure of chatting
with my dear friend Christina Sass. Christina is the co
founder and board member of Indela, a company that recruits
the most talented software engineers and the African continent impairs
them with global tech companies as full time distributed team members.
In five years, and Della has hired almost two thousand
(00:42):
developers and become known as the best place to work
in Africa with tech campuses and Lagos and Arobi Kampala
and Kegali founded on the premise that brilliance is evenly distributed,
but opportunity is not, and Della has built one of
the world's most selective engineering institutions. Christina has built education
and employment programs in China, Gaza, at the West Bank,
(01:02):
Kenya and Nigeria. Prior to co founding Adela, she directed
the program department at the Clinton Global Initiative and advised
the President and CEO of the MasterCard Foundation. Christina serves
in the advisory council of the n y U Stern
Center for Business and Human Rights and on the board
of the nonprofit Global Giveback Circle, as well as the
Summit Impact Foundation. Christina's work has been mentioned by Forbes, CNN,
(01:25):
The New Yorker, NBC, and Wired, and she joined us
to talk about how traveling and teaching around the world
fostered her passion for youth employment, cracking jokes with Bill Gates,
and how artificial intelligence will change the future of hiring.
So please enjoy my conversation with Christina Sass. Christina, Welcome
(01:47):
to the podcast. Hi, thank you. I'm excited to be here.
Thank you for joining us. Where where do we find
you today? So? I have made the cross country journey
with my nine week old uh So. I just left
California in the San Francisco area and took a fifty
two hour train ride across the country from San fran
(02:10):
to Chicago and then rented a car and now I'm
back in in Williamsburg in Brooklyn. Wow, back to where
you were before the Indella Journey kicked off. Correct, Yes, yep,
I was here working for for President Clinton and living
in Williamsburg at the time. Um, and and now I'm back.
Remind me where you where did you grow up? Southern girl?
(02:31):
So I grew up in Georgia. So I grew up
on the outskirts of Atlanta and then went to the
University of Georgia and worked. My first job out of
college was at the Athens Georgia y m c A. Yeah,
I spent most of my years up until in Yeah,
you know I'm from Texas. Yes, all of us southern implants.
(02:54):
You got it, you got it. Um, well I love that,
and and we're and you you've got a master's in
Internet final law and diplomacy. So clearly this was something
you know, you had, um some itch to be involved
in like the great you know, movements and games that
are dictating a lot of these things that affect the
people across the world, whether it's eight or education. Clearly
(03:16):
you had you had this bug in you from an
early and early start. Yeah, I did. So. My dad
immigrated to the States from from Germany from sort of
a shattered post World War two Germany. He was born
in forty two. So he was an infant and he
came to the States at age twenty two with basically
like a suitcase and a couple hundred bucks and restarted.
(03:36):
And so he and my mom, as my brother and
I grew, they really carted us all over the world.
And so I got the international bug from him from
going to see his family, and then we'd add on
a trip to Poland, and we'd add on, you know,
a trip to Paris and to France, and so mostly
across Europe. But I got this bug very early that um,
(03:57):
the world was much much larger and to get out
there and see it pretty quickly. So yeah, after working
at the Athens, Georgia y m c A for several years,
I basically saved all my money, which was nothing. I
think I think my full time salary school right yeah,
before grad school, so I think my full time salary
was like twenty three thousand dollars. Saved everything I could,
(04:17):
living with friends and stuff, and then I just went
I just went rogue. I just traveled to see friends
that I had worked at, various camps and things from
all over from Australia, from New Zealand, and then I
ended up in Taiwan looking for international teaching jobs, and
then I ended up teaching and living in southeastern China,
(04:37):
eventually in the Palestinian territories. That's when I after working
for several years overseas and kind of being deep in it,
that's when I looked to focus more on youth employment
and the path from education into employment and sought out
grad school and then went back to the Fletcher School
and what was the Utahl International School Utah Long Sway,
(04:59):
Su South. I figured I was going to butcher the
pronunciation the end, that's my That's a tiny bit of
Chinese that I know. So it is a it's a
private school in southeastern China. That was truly one of
the crazier places I've ever worked. There was a woman
who was like a real estate investor out of Hong Kong,
(05:20):
and she owned this massive garden and it was intended
to be a tourist destination in in you know, kind
of for the Wandong province, and it completely failed and
so it sat there for ten years. And so it
was like the perfectly cultivated, functual garden with all these
you know, carvings and all this stuff, and then it
(05:41):
just everything grew over for ten years and then she
put down a private school in the front of the property.
And so I'm like in my mid twenties, rare and
to go, and happened upon this teaching job. Really cool
principle was building up the school to be accredited in
the British school system, and I jumped on board and
did absolutely everything. I was like the librarian for a week.
(06:04):
I taught all kinds of E. S. L and and
English literature to all levels of students. But I was
like top pe for a couple of weeks. And then
in the summertimes, when the whole property was empty, built
a leadership program and a in a summer program there
and we would just take the kids off into the
garden and ripped down vines and find these like old
(06:25):
you know, Chinese scrolls, and it was just a crazy adventure, unbelievable,
and a lot of that you took to the work
that you did in the West Bank, right, it was
camps and leadership programs and yeah, so with Tomorrow's Youth,
it was that is truly one of the most grassroots
organizations I've ever worked with. So Handy Moster is the
(06:46):
founder and benefactor and it's just sort of like a
godfather type figure. He's amazing and it's still a good friend.
He went through the entire peace process with Clinton and
with the Astar Areo Fat. Like when the handshake and
the Rose Garden happened. Yasir Arfat was staying at Handy
Master's house in Washington, d C. And he kind of
was known as sort of the middle of the road
(07:07):
Palestinian voice. And after years and years and years of
going through this painful up and now political process, he
just decided, I don't believe that this is necessarily gonna
bring forward the future that I want. And so he
invested his money and time in literally driving through the
camps and asking parents what they wanted for their kids.
(07:27):
And then his family had this huge building in Naubilists,
which is, you know, the heart of both anti fatas.
So it's just a study tormented by violence. And he
set up this youth center there and so we taught
very young kids all the way up to kind of
twelve thirteen. I taught several mothers classes. Mothers wanted to
(07:48):
learn English and computer skills that their kids were learning
so they could help them. But yes, it was it
was sort of like what is the local community need
and what resources do we have to bring to bear
and listen to them and then provide it. So it
was an extraordinary experience. The West Bank is a crazy
place to work too. And then how did you I mean,
it's just it's so funny because we've been friends now
(08:10):
for it seems like forever, but it's been around eleven years.
Is when our dear friend Michael Hebb, who has also
been on the podcast um introduced us and you were
you were deep in the game, helping build out you know,
the annual Clinton Global Initiative events, which I don't think
people today realize how important these were. That they were
(08:31):
beyond the West Coast Davos, because it had an impact focus,
it had, you know, a different agenda, but it was
it was as important of any as any event was
in the world in terms of motivating capital and heads
of state and Nobel Prize winners. But what was the jump, Like,
how did you go from being like boots on the
ground in China and West Bank to connecting with the
(08:53):
c g I group. Well, it was a big leap
of faith. So after kind of gallivanting for a while
and being a gypsy always focused on youth at end
camps or educational programs. But I went back to grad
school and then I graduated in you know, a perfect
time to have an international relations degree, which is two
thousand nine, the collapse of the global economy, and so
(09:16):
I ended up taking a six month consultancy with the
Clinton Global Initiative. They needed a workforce that was sort
of highly skilled and a little more advanced, but only
for for six months around the annual meeting, and so
I worked in basically education and women's empowerment on the
commitment to action side of the c g I model.
(09:38):
And so basically after grad school, I had not much
of a plan. So I took a glory was essentially
a glorified internship. I think they paid us like eight
k for six months in New York, which, as you know,
it does not get you too far. But I had
six months to the day to start paying back my
grad school loans, and so I took a took a
big risk and took this six month consultancy. And it
(10:01):
is so fascinating how high level event management has a
whole lot in common with the complex logistics of running childcare.
Of all shapes and sizes and education and after school
programs and all these things. It's like managing parents, managing
difficult you know, children, managing multiple stakeholders and complex schedules.
(10:22):
This actually brought a lot to the Clinton Global Initiative model,
or eventually I was given all of the difficult members
and members that were struggling to make their commitment to action.
I was known to have that Southern touch of being
very firm but very polite. So yeah, I did this
consultancy where we are getting people to make commitments to
action in the world of education and employment and then
(10:45):
in girls and women's empowerment. I just went all in
and it was so fun and it was like having
three full time jobs. And then at the end of it,
I you know, it was like a little bit of
luck and timing and a lot of hard work. And
then I moved up to deputy director of the Program
Department and then eventually director of the Program Department. My
plan was work with all these incredible people who are
(11:06):
out there doing cutting edge work in youth education and employment,
and then go work for the best of them. And instead,
I really loved c g I, and I loved being
a part of all of building those especially the cross
sector commitments to action when you were bringing you know,
public private partnerships together. And so I ended up staying
and working there for about four years and running the
(11:28):
program department. What were some of the highlights there, Like
give us an example of a day where you're just like,
this is wild and really like delivering for you on
what you were seeking in terms of like creative problem
solving at scale and in the impact arena. So I
think the coolest thing is was getting huge power brokers
with people that can write big checks, getting them into
(11:48):
the room because of a big name, but putting an
unbelievable young person from Palestine or from Uganda who had
an insanely cool idea and was executing on it well.
And so you'd walk into the room thinking you were
there for muked oar Kent and really, um, you end
up walking out and being blown away by the social
(12:09):
entrepreneur operating in East Africa that you then get super
passionate about. I love that that's your name dropped by
the way it's moved our Kent. It's not like it
wasn't it Lebron James No, And you know, there were
just there were the crazier moments I got to meet
the incredible world leaders. So take muked Ar Kent for example.
(12:29):
You know, we put him on a stage with Queen Ronnie,
who's doing incredible things, and um In Jordan's and then
Katie correct to moderate that event, who's great moderator. But
it is also like very socially minded and you get
to really direct that conversation towards girls and women's empowerment.
We did a panel with those three people and a
female head of state from West Africa, and muked Arkent
(12:52):
in the middle of it was like talking about how
he was surprised that women couldn't own property across most
of the African continent and it's anybody who worked there
for years knows that, and so see that kind of
ah ha moment taking place on stage, it was like, yeah, man,
it's the world is a lot different than even global
leaders think. It is so from from a perspective of
(13:14):
getting to open people's minds and getting to focus on
things that I thought were moving the needle programs that
I thought were making a huge difference. That was the
thrust of the impact work. And then there's just like
being around so I think President Clinton he has many,
many flaws, but he is also a once in a
generation combination of heart and mind. He has a photographic memory.
(13:36):
So I'd have a team of people working on the
right speaker in the right topic, for example, a Latin
American woman who's also an expert in rainforest. I mean,
we'd research that, we'd research something like that for a month,
and then we'd sit down with him and be like,
what about Susan and what about Joe Anne, and what
about you know, like I mean for a very specific topic,
(13:58):
you know, So that is it was just incredible to
constantly be in a dialogue with him about what, after
an entire career of you know, working for social change,
what he thought was going to work, and what he
really saw as the future. So it was it was
really a benefit to be able to work with him
at the you know, kind of at the end of
his career where he was no longer running for anything.
(14:20):
It really was about impact. Yeah. I just remember in
two thousand and ten Clinton being the Michael Jordan of
public speaking, Like you just give this guy a microphone
and he would blow your mind and he would just
read the room and be like all right, well, I'll
talk to you all for twenty minutes about something that's
going to change your life. He was, I have to say,
like being on the other end of that, I mean
he is, and you just like you set him off
(14:42):
and let him go. And it was so fun, particularly
at the annual Clinton Global Initiative University. He got so
pumped about these incredible university students and their ideas. I
can picture being backstage my whole team with like head
in hands, just freaking out because he's fifty minutes for
you know, his speaking time, and there's like a red
(15:02):
blinking in front of him, and my man is just
like he's on fire, zero ships. He's like, I'm in
my zone. I'm having a good time. This is why
what he lives for. But yes, one of the most
fond parts of that job was was sort of that,
no matter how what a high level that person had
gotten to still walking on a stage with William Jefferson,
Clinton made made people nervous and made people. And you
(15:25):
know the green room there is at c g I
is like no one has their assistant, there's nothing to
really hide behind. It's just these incredible power brokers and
somehow being on stage with with President Clinton would make
them like really quite nervous. And so I got to
sit with these incredible world leaders in this very vulnerable
moment and just hold them in that space and just
(15:46):
be like, look, he's invited you here because your extraordinary
at this one thing. Really just talked them through how
to make it most successful. So I'll tell you one
anecdote that will tell you how fun this was. So
I got the honor of meeting Bill Gates when he came.
He and I were sitting in the green room beforehand,
and I was briefing him. He'd been at the UN
(16:09):
General Assembly events and so it's all very professional and
you know, here's the percentage of people that are attending,
and this many people have said they're interested in global health.
And then the and I just realized that like I
wasn't breaking through and it was gonna be And it
was an armchair chat between the two and them, which
should be really like like this open, honest, funny, and
I was like, I gotta break through this guy, you know.
(16:30):
So I told him, I was like, sir, you know
a lot of people have been going through these panels
of you know, several different speakers. They're very excited about it.
One on one exchange with you too, he's like really
the first time he kind of leaned forward and I
was like, I just decided to go for it. I
was like, yeah, actually, my staff has been telling me
that we should title it two bills and some change.
And he's like paused for a second and then laughed
(16:53):
out loud, and after that we were just we were
there together laughing. It was awesome. It was hilarious. That
was my moment. I was like, I'm either going to
get fired or I'm going to make this so much
better session. But I love your language. You were there
together versus there separately, right, Like that's something that I imagine,
really you might have learned through all the work that
(17:13):
you did internationally or really served you. And the reason
I wanted to go deeper on this threat, it's just
because you know, this is exactly what I was hoping
to understand. More Like, it sounds like you were you
could unlock a lot of wisdom and a lot of relationships.
I imagine a lot of these people remained advisors of
yours as you went on to create new you know,
entities or our company is correct, absolutely, Yes, investors, advisors,
(17:38):
people that you can just you know, call up and
bounce ideas off of. Yes, I got really the honor
to bring a lot of them with me and many
of my colleagues from Clinton Global as well. I think
part of being around those types of ideas, and this
is part of why President Clinton started the whole thing,
was like, yes, an average citizen can actually dedicate themselves
to something and make an extraordinary to friends. You know,
(18:01):
you used to tell the story that he'd have everybody
sit in his chair as president, but like sit there, Yes,
you can, YouTube can sit there. And so for me
in my own life, it was I got to meet
all these incredible people while organizing c g I and
then eventually had my own shot, and I was like,
not only is this possible, but it's it's plausible if
you put your mind to it. We'll be back with
(18:23):
more out of the hustle after the break. Well, and
I know you've done so many other incredible things and
worked with amazing organizations, but I do want to, you know,
jump to Adela, which is just such a generationally important
company to market based solution that is bringing high performing
(18:48):
engineering training into you know, Africa and investing in Africa
and investing in the most talented software developers, and a
lot of the work I know you get to dedicate
your time to now is expanding that further and further
into these communities. Um, but take us back to the
to the start. How did this thing happen? Yeah? Okay,
So here's the short version. So I kind of left
(19:10):
the field to go back to grad school and then
Clinton Global, which I told you about. After c g I,
I wanted to get back out into it, and so
I found the organization and the leader who's I felt
doing really transformational work. And I went to work for
Rita Roy, who was one of those like she was
one of those people who was, you know, a speaker
at c g I and came to the event. And
(19:31):
she's also a Fletcher grad and so we had a
lot in common. And she was building a foundation focused
almost exclusively on education and employment in Africa. So I
went to work for her, and I was bringing together
the twelve or thirteen biggest grand tees of the foundation
who were kind of my like, they were just my heroes.
(19:52):
There were people that were doing unbelievable work across the continent.
So Fred Swannaker of African Leadership Academy and African Leadership
University and a l X and James Wongi social entrepreneur
that that built Equity Bank, which is you know, a
bank dedicated to the bottom ten percent and getting them
into formal banking. And Patrick Awa, the president of a
(20:14):
Chessi University in Ghana, just you know, one of the
best institutions on the whole continent, and just these unbelievable leaders.
So I got to bring them together once a year
and talk about how we could break down some barriers
and and do collaborations between their organizations to really increase
employment on the continent. And in I was tesked with
(20:39):
bringing everybody to Nairobi and really talking about kind of
the cutting edge of education technology and how that was
going to affect and tech on the continent in the
next you know, ten years or so. So I made
a call to my dear friend Jeremiah Johnson, whom I
met at the summit series. We had an ongoing friendship
(21:02):
and but also like a really we challenged each other
in in sort of like what is most effective in
getting access to education really quality education? And so he
was the co founder of to you a phenomenal company,
one of the only tech I p O s and
in the past decade, and just impressive company up and down. However,
(21:23):
it was working with you know, Berkeley and and UNC,
Chappel Hill and Georgetown, and that's a lot different than
working with institutions on the continent. And so I had
been telling him for years to come and see and
let's find ways to work together. And so I actually
did send him a ticket in an invitation. I was like, no, seriously,
(21:45):
come talk to these leaders. These are the cutting edge
of of you know, education and employment across the continent,
and they'd love to hear what you're doing, it to you,
what you're learning, and if there's ways we can do
something big together. So he came, took me up on it,
and was his first trip to sub sit here in Africa.
Took him all around. We went to Cuberra, we saw
girls tech programs, and I t students and and then
(22:09):
we spent three days with this group of leaders, him
telling them what they were learning and seeing it to
you and hearing about a Chess university and about Equity
bank and a LU and all these things. And so
I pitched an idea which was, let's take something like
engineers and let's use a too you like program where
(22:30):
we take a CHESSI university's engineering program and we enable
them to serve ten x the number of students because
they do it online, um, and we use all of
the tools and systems that to use built up over
time to do that, and then we find the employers
on the back end, and as soon as they graduate,
you know, they're snatched up. Let's focus on something like
(22:51):
engineers that we know are in high demand. You know,
MasterCard Foundation can fund it to you as to know how,
and a chefs he's got the students, and you know,
I basically pitched a large scale collaboration of that sort.
Like most ideas, they go through bumps, and this one did.
It wasn't even a bump. It completely failed. Chessie had
a five year plan that did not include this. Too
(23:11):
early for an entirely online you know, other institutions were
interested in it. It was really early for to you
to think about operating anywhere else, you know, besides the
US market. It was just too early for its time
in a bunch of different ways. But Jeremy was certainly
hooked by the talent, the depth of the of the
talent pool that he saw the opportunity, and this is
(23:33):
what I was pushing, and I was like, dude, don't
tell me about access to education at Berkeley and Georgetown,
Like come get in, you know, get in the an
arena where it's like, you know, you've got all of
the talent, but not the you know, not access at all.
And at this point, I'm sorry, did you know that
you wanted to start a company yet or was this
just still like moving This sounds still in sort of
like your ecosystems approach to just like the things that
(23:56):
you were passionate about. This wasn't with the intention of
starting a business with, you know, Jeremy at that point
in time. It wasn't. It was really this obsession with
youth employment and different ways to slice it, different ways
to get at it. And I knew that the talent
was there. I knew that there was a huge opportunity there,
and word for word, I remember saying to Jeremy like,
(24:16):
just get in here with me, like, solve this problem.
I don't know what it looks like, but I know
that there's a huge opportunity and I know that a
brain and heart and mind like yours will help me
break through to what this can be. And sure enough
that was January. To you went public in March, obviously
they were marching down that path, but to human public
in March. I think Jeremy was looking for his next big,
(24:38):
huge idea and he said, look, absent the tuition, which
is the revenue model of to you. He's like, what,
how could we make it work? So we looked a
bunch of different ways, and as it turns out, software
developers are in such high demand and are at such
you know, high margins and salaries respective to other jobs.
(24:58):
We were like, if we do this right, we can
find extraordinary talent and by placing one person, we can
recruit ten others to bring them into the pipeline and
bring their skills, you know, up to the highest level
and also employ them. So we put out a pilot
to do this um and really we thought we were
working with, you know, a group of other entrepreneurs that
(25:20):
eventually became our co founders. But at the time Jeremy
and I were like, maybe we'll mentor them, will invest
in them, and we'll put this idea out there, but
we'll let them execute on it. Once we were i
would say a month and a half into it, it
was clear we were utterly obsessed and this is what
we were going to do. We knew that when we
put out a pilot in Lagos, Nigeria, and we used
(25:41):
our kind of Nigerian co founders Twitter account to put
out an application that said, do you want to get
paid to become a world class software developer. We got
about seven applicants to the first cohort and then we
put a little bit more emphasis on it. Maybe we
put it on a couple other sites for the cohort
can cohort. We got two applications for how many well,
(26:05):
we didn't even know. We were just going to see
what we got, you know, we didn't know how many
we would accept. But we were using a kind of
a testing service that was like a proxy for i Q,
and the testing service called us and they're like, what
the hell is this. You're crashing our systems because you
have so many applicants. We've never seen so many applicants
from one job, and you have forty eight candidates in
(26:26):
this pool that we considered to be in the top
two percent of i Q in the world. In the world.
And so that's where we were like, we absolutely know
we can find the talent. Everybody we know in the
startup game, and the States needs software developers, Like there's
a huge opportunity here. And that's where we kind of
quit everything else and just utterly put our heads down
(26:47):
to focus on on this thing, which became in NOLLA unbelievable.
And it's just it's I understand why it would have
applicants out the gate and and you know, under because
because talent or capacity for talent, you know, is distributed equally,
but opportunities certainly isn't. And you know, I don't consider
(27:08):
myself in the top two percent of intelligent people in
the world, but I've had you know, so much access
and exposure to people who are. I can just like,
you know, like we were talking about, with our sort
of early exposure to these brilliant people, you know, we
got to we got to save a lot of the
pain of gaining that wisdom ourselves, you know, or never
getting there. And I think that you know, you hear
the metaphor teach a man to fish, but it's like
(27:30):
you're not, this is an empowering technology, Like you're saying
I'm not you know, giving you a job that you
might lose or gain based on you know, macro market forces.
You're saying like, we're going to train you in the
job of the future. And you now, I mean, I
imagine these people are in the top earning percentiles in
Nigeria right if they're working with get hub or Headspace
or these these companies that you guys work with, well,
(27:53):
I would say that they that they are now that
so we were we were we were working with people
who were just starting out their career. But essentially that
was that's what we were saying to them is even
if you train with us in you know, Ruby on rails, uh,
let's say for example, that may not be around in
fifteen years. But the skill set that you build up,
(28:13):
the muscles that you build up, you know, of being
able to learn quickly and shift and change. We sought
out lifelong learners who had we had solved evidence in
their background of mastery. You know that that required themselves
and you know, hour after hour of chipping away at
a at a complex problem that those kind of skill
set would would serve them well. And so yes, that
(28:34):
was our our bet was we can find incredible problem
solvers whose brains are wired for the type of problem
that is software development. And then we find people that
are extremely you know, long term values and mission aligned.
And I can't think of a more important sector to
have virtuous people in when we look at you know,
(28:57):
our generation. I don't know what your grandma used to
tell you, but it was always like doctors and lawyers,
and that is you know, the past, like the future,
technologist will shape the future, and the decisions that they
make about technology platforms and tools, whether they are virtuous
or not, will have massive impact. And so that's what
we're looking for, you know, top top, top problem solvers
(29:19):
that loved and we're dedicated towards a life of technology
and that wanted to you know, really change the world
and hold certain values that play out through the technology
they build. You've now, you know, spent pretty much your
whole adult life thinking about this work and and dedicating
your time to this space. I'm very curious your thoughts
(29:39):
and like, you know, sort of the things that you know,
we can be leaning into right now that domestically, I
think UM, the application of artificial intelligence to UM sort
of job searching is something I'm actually very excited about
so at ADELA, we didn't have perfect tools, but over
(30:00):
and over again we looked at how applicants looked, you know,
in the application period, all the way through to how
they performed on client work, and we made assumptions about
what we thought would work and didn't work, and then
we got smarter and smarter and smarter by who performed
well on clients. And it wasn't necessarily what you would
think for a software developer. So, for example, social and
(30:22):
emotional intelligence is hugely important in remote client work. The
typical stereotype of a software developer in the States is
like moody, opinionated, where's their big headphones, doesn't want a
lot of input, And that is like false, that's utterly
false for what we found makes a great software developer.
So the application to different all these different groups coming
(30:44):
into the workforce today is that like, I don't want
to have to convince you that this person who was
in prison is also a great technologist, and I shouldn't
have to because they're sitting in front of a computer
screening coding, and what you should care about is the
quality of their code. And so if you can find
the skill sets and the things in a person's past
(31:04):
that will dictate if they're going to be good at
this or not. We can just make much smarter decisions,
you know about our workforces. A great praxi from one
of my team members by top top team members, a
guy named Evan Greenlow. He said, you know, like who
brings in a top soccer player, Like who's going to
bring in messy and be like, how do you feel
(31:25):
about your performance on the field, and do you feel
that you're a good team player? Like no one gives
a ship. They've been watching every kick, every pass that
he's made um for his entire life, and they know
how he's gonna perform into the future. And so there
are so many different jobs in the future that will
be just like that, where we can you know, we
(31:45):
can know by a way of a person performs that
it's it will be utterly merit based and it will overcome,
you know, some of the lack of a formal head degree,
art of the hustle will be right back after this
short break. Those skill jobs, you think that those are
(32:09):
more vocational in training versus like four year university or
are we going to see a new type of certification
that informs potential partners and employers of our skill sets.
Like where do you think this goes? Well? I think
the future belongs to certainly in the realm of technology.
I think it belongs to people that enjoy re upping
(32:30):
their skill set. Um. So that's kind of a you know,
not a complete answer to your question, but I do
think it's going to change so rapidly that people who
enjoy coming out of the fray and retraining for you know,
six months every three years are going to get the
benefit you know, of of part of the future of work.
(32:53):
I do I think there's a place for the four
year degree. Yes, I don't think it will. I don't
think we'll do away with it entirely, but I think
there will be you know, many many more entry points
to good paying jobs because of what you can prove
that you can build, not because of where you can
prove you got into for school. I think if you
can do something in a really scrappy way. On the side,
(33:15):
I love, for instance, for software developers. Now there are
application processes and systems where an employer can watch you,
you know, get a problem and get into just exactly
as you would. It's in their their computer system. But
you can look at what they look up on the
web and what they look up and get hub, and
how they build and how they problem solve. Um, it's
(33:37):
much more the real world than Okay, come up to
the white board and you know, and fill something out.
We need to understand how people's brain solve problems. That's
going to be a much better indicator of how they're
going to perform on your team than where they got
into college. So I don't have all the answers and
where the workforce is going to go, but the entry
(33:58):
points will be allowed more of a meritocracy and and
inevitably the workforce will get more diverse, more international, and
all those things are incredibly good things totally, and you know,
one of the keys for some it makes it a
little more difficult to manage in terms of like delivering
on people's interests. But you know, the more diverse the inputs,
the more complex and impactful the outputs. Like I I
(34:20):
agree with you that diversity is its own value. It's
not like some addendum thing one thing that this brings
to mind. I have a buddy who, uh, you know,
this is what I'm gonna tell talk about is like,
you know, trade secret from six years ago. So I'm
sure he's so far advanced now. But his name is
le rom Siegel, and he founded click Health, which like
one of the largest healthcare agencies in the world, and
(34:40):
they hire thousands of people on behalf of compounds. Right,
could be a startup or a professor at at you know, Pitzer,
could be you know, fighter right in a multibillion dollar
compound or whatever. And they'll hire the team and name
the drug and train the doctors and make the marketing
they and so so you're taking sometimes these these companies
from three to three hundred people through this process and um,
(35:01):
so they hire a lot of people, and I remember
this is this is you know a long he might
might even be longer ago. He was super excited about.
He's like some of the things that we figured out.
One when we interview people, we put a door that
takes you straight outside as close as possible to the
room that they're actually like doing the tests in, so
they have an easy option to just bounce and they
(35:22):
don't have to say good about anybody. And then uh,
you did. They would do the first test online, they'd say, Hey,
I mean like you could cheat if you wanted to,
But like the second test is in person, you actually
have to know this stuff in order to do this job,
so it doesn't really make sense to cheat. And then
and then the third thing was when you would get
there and you're in your room and you're in front
of the module, there was a board with twenty names
(35:43):
and extensions on it and they would say, hey, you
can hit up anybody on this board. It could be here.
It could be Miriam, it could be you know, it
could be Rachelle, it could be whoever about any question
you want. And here they're extensions, so it's actually one person.
There are two people that would be with those extensions,
and they were instructed give you the answer to anything
that you asked. I mean it's like who took advantage
(36:03):
of it, who collaborative and so so it can it
can source these new and this is you know, again
like ancient history. I'm sure there's people like yourself who
have even you know, more thoughtful, more you know, scalable
UM sorting methods. But I just I just I I
do agree with you that, like you know, especially for
certain things like we're talking about um. You know, like
(36:25):
there will be uh meritocraticization. And I think that the
key is having the building blocks, like if you weren't
you know, there's so many savage inequalities and nutrition and
in terms of how well your brain can function or
you know, the the the basis of education maybe that
you have so you did you did you learn how
to learn? So I wonder where we need to like
(36:46):
if we're thinking about this now, like I'm almost trying
to get you to put your you know, uh, your
heal the world Christine s asked, like traveling around the
planet hat on, Like, and I know you're there's still
so much you're doing with Adela, but I'm curious, like
where is the are some of these points we should
be focusing on. Yeah, I mean okay, so obviously that
the you know, geography that I know best is is
(37:08):
Sub Saharan Africa, and there, for example, ten years ago
we read all this stuff about you know, well, as
soon as they get the Internet, all these problems will
be solved. And that's just that is just false. So
one of the lessons of Vandela is that, like it is,
it's long term investment in people's learnings. It's making learning
a part of their job. Now we hired for people
(37:30):
that have a passion for learning and that they enjoy that.
But you still have to say, you know, of your
job forever is going to be learning and relearning and
re relearning, and do you you know, do you want
to commit to that? And so for you know, for
the parts of the world that desperately need the sort
of access, I would say, we need to get rid
(37:51):
of the pipe dream that we're going to lay the
fiber cable and people are just going to rise up
out of poverty. That is not going to be the case.
Like we need to invest heavily in and learning platforms
and giving people time and mentorship. And those of us
that have gone through our career path dedicating really being
mentors and helping people problem solve and it's just it's
(38:11):
time and exposure. So for software developers, we have extraordinary
tools out there. There's great tools out there. We just
need to get it to the right people in the
right places and then give them, you know, some time
and mentorship. So if you take women in technology, for example,
the two top reasons why they don't pursue careers in
in technology even in the States, but definitely in other
parts of the world is because they just don't believe
(38:34):
that there are jobs for them. They don't believe their
jobs because they don't see mentors, they don't see people
like themselves moving up. And it is happening, but we
gotta make that known to people and bring that next generation,
you know, up with us. So and the same thing
as the tools that we're building to train software developers online.
It's happening in so many different sectors. I mean, look
at what just happened in COVID. We never thought that
(38:57):
so many companies would believe in distributed work and that
that would be the way of the future. Well, it
turns out when that's all you got, you adapt pretty
freaking quickly. So now we know that you can, you know,
train for and do an enormous number of tasks in
a completely distributed fashion. And so we need to apply
ourselves to to taking that you know, expert training and
(39:21):
dispersing it evenly and equally. This is what I thought,
to you did very very well, so to you. They
were responsible for Georgetown's nursing program. They proved that the
people who learned nursing online learned it better than the
people who were on site at Georgetown. That's in that's insane,
but it just it form fits function. What are you
(39:41):
teaching in what way? Now? Of course everybody has to
go to a hospital and practice putting in needles and
you know, doing the things that you can only do
that our tactile. But there are other pieces of that
learning that's like, let's figure out how to teach it
the best with the best teacher that we now we
can absolutely can scale. We know the best time for people,
you know, time in the day for people to learn.
(40:03):
We can track how they solve problems. We can so
all of those things about learning a career path can
be now done more specifically online, and all those things
make it more diverse and more of a meritocracy. Yeah,
I'm with it, and I'm not techno utopianists. I don't
think that like technology by nature of being technology is
(40:23):
good for the world, and I don't think it will
save us all. But I do think that there's these
really interesting factors that get broken down, like these you know,
institutional disadvantages where someone on the other side of it
has a reason for you not having that thing, like
they have an economic interest in keeping things the way
they are right and so I think things like starlink,
(40:45):
where you know, globally, in the near future, you're gonna
have the Internet worldwide in some Saharan Africa that's better
than you know, many parts of Williamsburg. And and you know, simultaneously,
you know we're going to be moved thing to a
future where you know, we'll have autonomous vehicles, will have
even more. And I'm not saying this in a good way,
(41:06):
like I feel like my work now chases me to bed,
to breakfast, to the bathroom, to wherever we go. We
can work now we have a supercomputer in our pocket
in front of our face, like ten hours a day.
So you know, I imagine that you think about that.
You know that because because I know how much you
love the in person and how important it is for
you personally. Yeah, your thoughts, that's really a question. I think. No,
(41:29):
I think you're a hundred percent right. It is a tool,
and that tool could be used for good, it could
be used for evil, it can be neutral. And so
I think education is the great democratizer. But in the
new workforce, given you know, distributed tools, it's like anything else,
you can use it in a shitty, half asked way.
Or you can really build people's career paths. But it
(41:50):
requires deep dedication, and it requires using all the tools
in the right way over the right period of time.
But it is it's it's overtaking all of our lives.
I would just rather it overtake our lives in a
way that provide people great jobs, not just shitty entry
level work. In Nigeria, for example, Legos, Nigeria is the
most entrepreneurial place in the world. I would I think
(42:12):
you'd be hard pressed to find a more entrepreneurial group
of people. They can survive in a thousand different ways
and create their own small businesses. But that's not what
they want. They want global careers. They want to compete globally,
and they're they're damn sure impressive and can compete. But
what gives them that access, Like what gives the badass
software developer from Legos the opportunity to compete globally? Well,
(42:35):
I don't want them to all have to pick up
and go to Silicon Valley. In fact, I much rather
than have the inputs and everything that they've learned from
growing up in Legos that will make them more competitive
in a way if they're able to show that they
can use those same skills to build a career path.
That's so thoughtful. And you had mentioned women in technology,
and you know, I want to be respectful of your time,
(42:56):
and I really appreciate you being in the podcast. But
you know, you you very famously at least in our
generation have raised more or the most or in the
top you know, percentage of venture capital behind you know,
this idea with Endela and you know one it's just
I don't, I don't. That's not you know, the measuring
stick for you, I know, and for people who are thoughtful,
(43:18):
they're not like, oh yeah, that that's the ends that
get you to the means, right, That's the activity that
you hope results in the outcome. But it also means
that you built something incredibly investable, right. And I imagine
that you you know, dealt with some things that are
you know, utter bullshit and we're difficult, sexist, and I
also imagine you found you know, really great advantages or
(43:40):
perhaps you don't think gender played into it at all.
But I would just love to hear you know, your
your experience a little bit on that. Yeah, thank you.
You know, I have to say I had the best
business partner in the world. And so I think Jeremy
and I were an incredible duo and that part of
the ability to raise was based on really both of
our backgrounds, his cutting edge tech in the States and
(44:01):
my work on the continent um and more globally before that.
But yeah, it's still it's a yardstick that people used
to measure and so regardless of how I feel about it,
it is a way that people measure entrepreneurs. And so
I'm certainly out there trying to help women raise left
and right for all the reasons that we know that
they build great businesses. You know, venture capital funding follows
(44:22):
other VC funding, so we gotta get the you know,
money in the right in the right hands, and in
the right direction. So I feel very lucky. We had
incredible long term mission aligned investors, and we certainly kissed
a lot of frogs along the way, but didn't marry them.
I didn't have the horrendous experience that other female founders
(44:43):
and all female teams have, and I think that is
partially because Jeremy and I worked together, and so I'm
you know, I'm grateful for that, but I can't entirely empathize.
But what I can do is tell women who are
out raising today that we do not have to put
up with any of that bullshit in this is another
realm where I hope that the future is much more
(45:03):
merit based and based in data and what we can
you know, prove. But yeah, I had a really positive
experience and I feel very grateful that we're able to
raise that much, and so it's my responsibility now to
pay that forward. And I guess taking us out on that.
You know, I know that you're now focused once again
on really like because Indela of course shifted to the
(45:24):
like top quintile of developer talent, and you know, I
q that leads to these you know, world class um
engineering positions, and I know that you're working to increase
the ladder and enable more people that are in that like,
you know, more I guess normalized group that that also
need these opportunities. Yeah, so I'm thinking about all sorts
(45:45):
of things, but I think what and DELA is now
really operating in mid market for software developers, so folks
that that have some experience, and we're hiring from all
over the continent, and I think pretty quickly you'll see
us expand beyond that, where we've got to put some
more time and effort is on is on these entry
level folks and how we get them sustainable on ramps
(46:07):
to the global economy. And that's when I really look
back at what to you is doing. They found large
groups of employers. First they work backwards to perfect the training.
I think that really the labor force marketplace is still broken.
You have all these employers saying well, I need this
skill set, in this skill set, in this skill set,
and they're not talking to the community college down the
(46:29):
road and the university down the road. There are certainly
some examples of that, but I would like to get
back into a hyper focus on we can find the
skill sets. We can find the people. They don't need
a fancy pedigree. What they need is to prove that
they can do a specific work. And then to take
large scale employers that need specific skill sets and really
(46:50):
drag them into the education system and say, you know,
work together, tell them exactly what you need to see
so that you can hire these types of people. So
I think my next move will be back to the
highly highly motivated young person who's who's just starting out
on their career path and is willing to hustle, is
willing to work, but where there's you know, kind of
(47:11):
a whole pipeline of people that are invested in them
and then an employer at the at the end of that.
So we'll see. I'm excited. And in the meantime, I'm
like the biggest champion for all of the ADELA alumni now,
which is over a thousand people who are out there
building businesses and becoming tech leaders. So I'm just cheering
(47:31):
them on and helping to connect and move them up
in a thousand ways. I still work with our our
Advisory Council, which is an awesome group that helps to
advise the senior team. Jeremy knows he can call me
a day or night for anything that he needs, uh
And so it's wonderful to be in that position and
to be able to still support them, and I know
that they'll support me in whatever I decided to dive
(47:53):
into next. Well, thank you, Christina, incredible. Thank you so much, Jeff.
I will never forget the times working with with you
all in the Summit series. I had so much fun.
We did have fun. Well, enjoy the new baby, Enjoy Williamsburg.
Than you let us know. However, we can be supportive
of your work and thank you for listening out of
the hustle. For more podcasts for my heart Radio, visit
(48:33):
the i heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you
listen to your favorite shows.
Art of the Hustle is a production of I Heart Radio.
You're listening to the Art of the Hustle, the show
that breaks down how some of the world's most fascinating
people have hustled and learned their way into achieving great things.
(00:21):
I'm your host Jeff Rosenthal, co founder of Summit, and
today on the show, I had the pleasure of chatting
with my dear friend Christina Sass. Christina is the co
founder and board member of Indela, a company that recruits
the most talented software engineers and the African continent impairs
them with global tech companies as full time distributed team members.
In five years, and Della has hired almost two thousand
(00:42):
developers and become known as the best place to work
in Africa with tech campuses and Lagos and Arobi Kampala
and Kegali founded on the premise that brilliance is evenly distributed,
but opportunity is not, and Della has built one of
the world's most selective engineering institutions. Christina has built education
and employment programs in China, Gaza, at the West Bank,
(01:02):
Kenya and Nigeria. Prior to co founding Adela, she directed
the program department at the Clinton Global Initiative and advised
the President and CEO of the MasterCard Foundation. Christina serves
in the advisory council of the n y U Stern
Center for Business and Human Rights and on the board
of the nonprofit Global Giveback Circle, as well as the
Summit Impact Foundation. Christina's work has been mentioned by Forbes, CNN,
(01:25):
The New Yorker, NBC, and Wired, and she joined us
to talk about how traveling and teaching around the world
fostered her passion for youth employment, cracking jokes with Bill Gates,
and how artificial intelligence will change the future of hiring.
So please enjoy my conversation with Christina Sass. Christina, Welcome
(01:47):
to the podcast. Hi, thank you. I'm excited to be here.
Thank you for joining us. Where where do we find
you today? So? I have made the cross country journey
with my nine week old uh So. I just left
California in the San Francisco area and took a fifty
two hour train ride across the country from San fran
(02:10):
to Chicago and then rented a car and now I'm
back in in Williamsburg in Brooklyn. Wow, back to where
you were before the Indella Journey kicked off. Correct, Yes, yep,
I was here working for for President Clinton and living
in Williamsburg at the time. Um, and and now I'm back.
Remind me where you where did you grow up? Southern girl?
(02:31):
So I grew up in Georgia. So I grew up
on the outskirts of Atlanta and then went to the
University of Georgia and worked. My first job out of
college was at the Athens Georgia y m c A. Yeah,
I spent most of my years up until in Yeah,
you know I'm from Texas. Yes, all of us southern implants.
(02:54):
You got it, you got it. Um, well I love that,
and and we're and you you've got a master's in
Internet final law and diplomacy. So clearly this was something
you know, you had, um some itch to be involved
in like the great you know, movements and games that
are dictating a lot of these things that affect the
people across the world, whether it's eight or education. Clearly
(03:16):
you had you had this bug in you from an
early and early start. Yeah, I did. So. My dad
immigrated to the States from from Germany from sort of
a shattered post World War two Germany. He was born
in forty two. So he was an infant and he
came to the States at age twenty two with basically
like a suitcase and a couple hundred bucks and restarted.
(03:36):
And so he and my mom, as my brother and
I grew, they really carted us all over the world.
And so I got the international bug from him from
going to see his family, and then we'd add on
a trip to Poland, and we'd add on, you know,
a trip to Paris and to France, and so mostly
across Europe. But I got this bug very early that um,
(03:57):
the world was much much larger and to get out
there and see it pretty quickly. So yeah, after working
at the Athens, Georgia y m c A for several years,
I basically saved all my money, which was nothing. I
think I think my full time salary school right yeah,
before grad school, so I think my full time salary
was like twenty three thousand dollars. Saved everything I could,
(04:17):
living with friends and stuff, and then I just went
I just went rogue. I just traveled to see friends
that I had worked at, various camps and things from
all over from Australia, from New Zealand, and then I
ended up in Taiwan looking for international teaching jobs, and
then I ended up teaching and living in southeastern China,
(04:37):
eventually in the Palestinian territories. That's when I after working
for several years overseas and kind of being deep in it,
that's when I looked to focus more on youth employment
and the path from education into employment and sought out
grad school and then went back to the Fletcher School
and what was the Utahl International School Utah Long Sway,
(04:59):
Su South. I figured I was going to butcher the
pronunciation the end, that's my That's a tiny bit of
Chinese that I know. So it is a it's a
private school in southeastern China. That was truly one of
the crazier places I've ever worked. There was a woman
who was like a real estate investor out of Hong Kong,
(05:20):
and she owned this massive garden and it was intended
to be a tourist destination in in you know, kind
of for the Wandong province, and it completely failed and
so it sat there for ten years. And so it
was like the perfectly cultivated, functual garden with all these
you know, carvings and all this stuff, and then it
(05:41):
just everything grew over for ten years and then she
put down a private school in the front of the property.
And so I'm like in my mid twenties, rare and
to go, and happened upon this teaching job. Really cool
principle was building up the school to be accredited in
the British school system, and I jumped on board and
did absolutely everything. I was like the librarian for a week.
(06:04):
I taught all kinds of E. S. L and and
English literature to all levels of students. But I was
like top pe for a couple of weeks. And then
in the summertimes, when the whole property was empty, built
a leadership program and a in a summer program there
and we would just take the kids off into the
garden and ripped down vines and find these like old
(06:25):
you know, Chinese scrolls, and it was just a crazy adventure, unbelievable,
and a lot of that you took to the work
that you did in the West Bank, right, it was
camps and leadership programs and yeah, so with Tomorrow's Youth,
it was that is truly one of the most grassroots
organizations I've ever worked with. So Handy Moster is the
(06:46):
founder and benefactor and it's just sort of like a
godfather type figure. He's amazing and it's still a good friend.
He went through the entire peace process with Clinton and
with the Astar Areo Fat. Like when the handshake and
the Rose Garden happened. Yasir Arfat was staying at Handy
Master's house in Washington, d C. And he kind of
was known as sort of the middle of the road
(07:07):
Palestinian voice. And after years and years and years of
going through this painful up and now political process, he
just decided, I don't believe that this is necessarily gonna
bring forward the future that I want. And so he
invested his money and time in literally driving through the
camps and asking parents what they wanted for their kids.
(07:27):
And then his family had this huge building in Naubilists,
which is, you know, the heart of both anti fatas.
So it's just a study tormented by violence. And he
set up this youth center there and so we taught
very young kids all the way up to kind of
twelve thirteen. I taught several mothers classes. Mothers wanted to
(07:48):
learn English and computer skills that their kids were learning
so they could help them. But yes, it was it
was sort of like what is the local community need
and what resources do we have to bring to bear
and listen to them and then provide it. So it
was an extraordinary experience. The West Bank is a crazy
place to work too. And then how did you I mean,
it's just it's so funny because we've been friends now
(08:10):
for it seems like forever, but it's been around eleven years.
Is when our dear friend Michael Hebb, who has also
been on the podcast um introduced us and you were
you were deep in the game, helping build out you know,
the annual Clinton Global Initiative events, which I don't think
people today realize how important these were. That they were
(08:31):
beyond the West Coast Davos, because it had an impact focus,
it had, you know, a different agenda, but it was
it was as important of any as any event was
in the world in terms of motivating capital and heads
of state and Nobel Prize winners. But what was the jump, Like,
how did you go from being like boots on the
ground in China and West Bank to connecting with the
(08:53):
c g I group. Well, it was a big leap
of faith. So after kind of gallivanting for a while
and being a gypsy always focused on youth at end
camps or educational programs. But I went back to grad
school and then I graduated in you know, a perfect
time to have an international relations degree, which is two
thousand nine, the collapse of the global economy, and so
(09:16):
I ended up taking a six month consultancy with the
Clinton Global Initiative. They needed a workforce that was sort
of highly skilled and a little more advanced, but only
for for six months around the annual meeting, and so
I worked in basically education and women's empowerment on the
commitment to action side of the c g I model.
(09:38):
And so basically after grad school, I had not much
of a plan. So I took a glory was essentially
a glorified internship. I think they paid us like eight
k for six months in New York, which, as you know,
it does not get you too far. But I had
six months to the day to start paying back my
grad school loans, and so I took a took a
big risk and took this six month consultancy. And it
(10:01):
is so fascinating how high level event management has a
whole lot in common with the complex logistics of running childcare.
Of all shapes and sizes and education and after school
programs and all these things. It's like managing parents, managing
difficult you know, children, managing multiple stakeholders and complex schedules.
(10:22):
This actually brought a lot to the Clinton Global Initiative model,
or eventually I was given all of the difficult members
and members that were struggling to make their commitment to action.
I was known to have that Southern touch of being
very firm but very polite. So yeah, I did this
consultancy where we are getting people to make commitments to
action in the world of education and employment and then
(10:45):
in girls and women's empowerment. I just went all in
and it was so fun and it was like having
three full time jobs. And then at the end of it,
I you know, it was like a little bit of
luck and timing and a lot of hard work. And
then I moved up to deputy director of the Program
Department and then eventually director of the Program Department. My
plan was work with all these incredible people who are
(11:06):
out there doing cutting edge work in youth education and employment,
and then go work for the best of them. And instead,
I really loved c g I, and I loved being
a part of all of building those especially the cross
sector commitments to action when you were bringing you know,
public private partnerships together. And so I ended up staying
and working there for about four years and running the
(11:28):
program department. What were some of the highlights there, Like
give us an example of a day where you're just like,
this is wild and really like delivering for you on
what you were seeking in terms of like creative problem
solving at scale and in the impact arena. So I
think the coolest thing is was getting huge power brokers
with people that can write big checks, getting them into
(11:48):
the room because of a big name, but putting an
unbelievable young person from Palestine or from Uganda who had
an insanely cool idea and was executing on it well.
And so you'd walk into the room thinking you were
there for muked oar Kent and really, um, you end
up walking out and being blown away by the social
(12:09):
entrepreneur operating in East Africa that you then get super
passionate about. I love that that's your name dropped by
the way it's moved our Kent. It's not like it
wasn't it Lebron James No, And you know, there were
just there were the crazier moments I got to meet
the incredible world leaders. So take muked Ar Kent for example.
(12:29):
You know, we put him on a stage with Queen Ronnie,
who's doing incredible things, and um In Jordan's and then
Katie correct to moderate that event, who's great moderator. But
it is also like very socially minded and you get
to really direct that conversation towards girls and women's empowerment.
We did a panel with those three people and a
female head of state from West Africa, and muked Arkent
(12:52):
in the middle of it was like talking about how
he was surprised that women couldn't own property across most
of the African continent and it's anybody who worked there
for years knows that, and so see that kind of
ah ha moment taking place on stage, it was like, yeah, man,
it's the world is a lot different than even global
leaders think. It is so from from a perspective of
(13:14):
getting to open people's minds and getting to focus on
things that I thought were moving the needle programs that
I thought were making a huge difference. That was the
thrust of the impact work. And then there's just like
being around so I think President Clinton he has many,
many flaws, but he is also a once in a
generation combination of heart and mind. He has a photographic memory.
(13:36):
So I'd have a team of people working on the
right speaker in the right topic, for example, a Latin
American woman who's also an expert in rainforest. I mean,
we'd research that, we'd research something like that for a month,
and then we'd sit down with him and be like,
what about Susan and what about Joe Anne, and what
about you know, like I mean for a very specific topic,
(13:58):
you know, So that is it was just incredible to
constantly be in a dialogue with him about what, after
an entire career of you know, working for social change,
what he thought was going to work, and what he
really saw as the future. So it was it was
really a benefit to be able to work with him
at the you know, kind of at the end of
his career where he was no longer running for anything.
(14:20):
It really was about impact. Yeah. I just remember in
two thousand and ten Clinton being the Michael Jordan of
public speaking, Like you just give this guy a microphone
and he would blow your mind and he would just
read the room and be like all right, well, I'll
talk to you all for twenty minutes about something that's
going to change your life. He was, I have to say,
like being on the other end of that, I mean
he is, and you just like you set him off
(14:42):
and let him go. And it was so fun, particularly
at the annual Clinton Global Initiative University. He got so
pumped about these incredible university students and their ideas. I
can picture being backstage my whole team with like head
in hands, just freaking out because he's fifty minutes for
you know, his speaking time, and there's like a red
(15:02):
blinking in front of him, and my man is just
like he's on fire, zero ships. He's like, I'm in
my zone. I'm having a good time. This is why
what he lives for. But yes, one of the most
fond parts of that job was was sort of that,
no matter how what a high level that person had
gotten to still walking on a stage with William Jefferson,
Clinton made made people nervous and made people. And you
(15:25):
know the green room there is at c g I
is like no one has their assistant, there's nothing to
really hide behind. It's just these incredible power brokers and
somehow being on stage with with President Clinton would make
them like really quite nervous. And so I got to
sit with these incredible world leaders in this very vulnerable
moment and just hold them in that space and just
(15:46):
be like, look, he's invited you here because your extraordinary
at this one thing. Really just talked them through how
to make it most successful. So I'll tell you one
anecdote that will tell you how fun this was. So
I got the honor of meeting Bill Gates when he came.
He and I were sitting in the green room beforehand,
and I was briefing him. He'd been at the UN
(16:09):
General Assembly events and so it's all very professional and
you know, here's the percentage of people that are attending,
and this many people have said they're interested in global health.
And then the and I just realized that like I
wasn't breaking through and it was gonna be And it
was an armchair chat between the two and them, which
should be really like like this open, honest, funny, and
I was like, I gotta break through this guy, you know.
(16:30):
So I told him, I was like, sir, you know
a lot of people have been going through these panels
of you know, several different speakers. They're very excited about it.
One on one exchange with you too, he's like really
the first time he kind of leaned forward and I
was like, I just decided to go for it. I
was like, yeah, actually, my staff has been telling me
that we should title it two bills and some change.
And he's like paused for a second and then laughed
(16:53):
out loud, and after that we were just we were
there together laughing. It was awesome. It was hilarious. That
was my moment. I was like, I'm either going to
get fired or I'm going to make this so much
better session. But I love your language. You were there
together versus there separately, right, Like that's something that I imagine,
really you might have learned through all the work that
(17:13):
you did internationally or really served you. And the reason
I wanted to go deeper on this threat, it's just
because you know, this is exactly what I was hoping
to understand. More Like, it sounds like you were you
could unlock a lot of wisdom and a lot of relationships.
I imagine a lot of these people remained advisors of
yours as you went on to create new you know,
entities or our company is correct, absolutely, Yes, investors, advisors,
(17:38):
people that you can just you know, call up and
bounce ideas off of. Yes, I got really the honor
to bring a lot of them with me and many
of my colleagues from Clinton Global as well. I think
part of being around those types of ideas, and this
is part of why President Clinton started the whole thing,
was like, yes, an average citizen can actually dedicate themselves
to something and make an extraordinary to friends. You know,
(18:01):
you used to tell the story that he'd have everybody
sit in his chair as president, but like sit there, Yes,
you can, YouTube can sit there. And so for me
in my own life, it was I got to meet
all these incredible people while organizing c g I and
then eventually had my own shot, and I was like,
not only is this possible, but it's it's plausible if
you put your mind to it. We'll be back with
(18:23):
more out of the hustle after the break. Well, and
I know you've done so many other incredible things and
worked with amazing organizations, but I do want to, you know,
jump to Adela, which is just such a generationally important
company to market based solution that is bringing high performing
(18:48):
engineering training into you know, Africa and investing in Africa
and investing in the most talented software developers, and a
lot of the work I know you get to dedicate
your time to now is expanding that further and further
into these communities. Um, but take us back to the
to the start. How did this thing happen? Yeah? Okay,
So here's the short version. So I kind of left
(19:10):
the field to go back to grad school and then
Clinton Global, which I told you about. After c g I,
I wanted to get back out into it, and so
I found the organization and the leader who's I felt
doing really transformational work. And I went to work for
Rita Roy, who was one of those like she was
one of those people who was, you know, a speaker
at c g I and came to the event. And
(19:31):
she's also a Fletcher grad and so we had a
lot in common. And she was building a foundation focused
almost exclusively on education and employment in Africa. So I
went to work for her, and I was bringing together
the twelve or thirteen biggest grand tees of the foundation
who were kind of my like, they were just my heroes.
(19:52):
There were people that were doing unbelievable work across the continent.
So Fred Swannaker of African Leadership Academy and African Leadership
University and a l X and James Wongi social entrepreneur
that that built Equity Bank, which is you know, a
bank dedicated to the bottom ten percent and getting them
into formal banking. And Patrick Awa, the president of a
(20:14):
Chessi University in Ghana, just you know, one of the
best institutions on the whole continent, and just these unbelievable leaders.
So I got to bring them together once a year
and talk about how we could break down some barriers
and and do collaborations between their organizations to really increase
employment on the continent. And in I was tesked with
(20:39):
bringing everybody to Nairobi and really talking about kind of
the cutting edge of education technology and how that was
going to affect and tech on the continent in the
next you know, ten years or so. So I made
a call to my dear friend Jeremiah Johnson, whom I
met at the summit series. We had an ongoing friendship
(21:02):
and but also like a really we challenged each other
in in sort of like what is most effective in
getting access to education really quality education? And so he
was the co founder of to you a phenomenal company,
one of the only tech I p O s and
in the past decade, and just impressive company up and down. However,
(21:23):
it was working with you know, Berkeley and and UNC,
Chappel Hill and Georgetown, and that's a lot different than
working with institutions on the continent. And so I had
been telling him for years to come and see and
let's find ways to work together. And so I actually
did send him a ticket in an invitation. I was like, no, seriously,
(21:45):
come talk to these leaders. These are the cutting edge
of of you know, education and employment across the continent,
and they'd love to hear what you're doing, it to you,
what you're learning, and if there's ways we can do
something big together. So he came, took me up on it,
and was his first trip to sub sit here in Africa.
Took him all around. We went to Cuberra, we saw
girls tech programs, and I t students and and then
(22:09):
we spent three days with this group of leaders, him
telling them what they were learning and seeing it to
you and hearing about a Chess university and about Equity
bank and a LU and all these things. And so
I pitched an idea which was, let's take something like
engineers and let's use a too you like program where
(22:30):
we take a CHESSI university's engineering program and we enable
them to serve ten x the number of students because
they do it online, um, and we use all of
the tools and systems that to use built up over
time to do that, and then we find the employers
on the back end, and as soon as they graduate,
you know, they're snatched up. Let's focus on something like
(22:51):
engineers that we know are in high demand. You know,
MasterCard Foundation can fund it to you as to know how,
and a chefs he's got the students, and you know,
I basically pitched a large scale collaboration of that sort.
Like most ideas, they go through bumps, and this one did.
It wasn't even a bump. It completely failed. Chessie had
a five year plan that did not include this. Too
(23:11):
early for an entirely online you know, other institutions were
interested in it. It was really early for to you
to think about operating anywhere else, you know, besides the
US market. It was just too early for its time
in a bunch of different ways. But Jeremy was certainly
hooked by the talent, the depth of the of the
talent pool that he saw the opportunity, and this is
(23:33):
what I was pushing, and I was like, dude, don't
tell me about access to education at Berkeley and Georgetown,
Like come get in, you know, get in the an
arena where it's like, you know, you've got all of
the talent, but not the you know, not access at all.
And at this point, I'm sorry, did you know that
you wanted to start a company yet or was this
just still like moving This sounds still in sort of
like your ecosystems approach to just like the things that
(23:56):
you were passionate about. This wasn't with the intention of
starting a business with, you know, Jeremy at that point
in time. It wasn't. It was really this obsession with
youth employment and different ways to slice it, different ways
to get at it. And I knew that the talent
was there. I knew that there was a huge opportunity there,
and word for word, I remember saying to Jeremy like,
(24:16):
just get in here with me, like, solve this problem.
I don't know what it looks like, but I know
that there's a huge opportunity and I know that a
brain and heart and mind like yours will help me
break through to what this can be. And sure enough
that was January. To you went public in March, obviously
they were marching down that path, but to human public
in March. I think Jeremy was looking for his next big,
(24:38):
huge idea and he said, look, absent the tuition, which
is the revenue model of to you. He's like, what,
how could we make it work? So we looked a
bunch of different ways, and as it turns out, software
developers are in such high demand and are at such
you know, high margins and salaries respective to other jobs.
(24:58):
We were like, if we do this right, we can
find extraordinary talent and by placing one person, we can
recruit ten others to bring them into the pipeline and
bring their skills, you know, up to the highest level
and also employ them. So we put out a pilot
to do this um and really we thought we were
working with, you know, a group of other entrepreneurs that
(25:20):
eventually became our co founders. But at the time Jeremy
and I were like, maybe we'll mentor them, will invest
in them, and we'll put this idea out there, but
we'll let them execute on it. Once we were i
would say a month and a half into it, it
was clear we were utterly obsessed and this is what
we were going to do. We knew that when we
put out a pilot in Lagos, Nigeria, and we used
(25:41):
our kind of Nigerian co founders Twitter account to put
out an application that said, do you want to get
paid to become a world class software developer. We got
about seven applicants to the first cohort and then we
put a little bit more emphasis on it. Maybe we
put it on a couple other sites for the cohort
can cohort. We got two applications for how many well,
(26:05):
we didn't even know. We were just going to see
what we got, you know, we didn't know how many
we would accept. But we were using a kind of
a testing service that was like a proxy for i Q,
and the testing service called us and they're like, what
the hell is this. You're crashing our systems because you
have so many applicants. We've never seen so many applicants
from one job, and you have forty eight candidates in
(26:26):
this pool that we considered to be in the top
two percent of i Q in the world. In the world.
And so that's where we were like, we absolutely know
we can find the talent. Everybody we know in the
startup game, and the States needs software developers, Like there's
a huge opportunity here. And that's where we kind of
quit everything else and just utterly put our heads down
(26:47):
to focus on on this thing, which became in NOLLA unbelievable.
And it's just it's I understand why it would have
applicants out the gate and and you know, under because
because talent or capacity for talent, you know, is distributed equally,
but opportunities certainly isn't. And you know, I don't consider
(27:08):
myself in the top two percent of intelligent people in
the world, but I've had you know, so much access
and exposure to people who are. I can just like,
you know, like we were talking about, with our sort
of early exposure to these brilliant people, you know, we
got to we got to save a lot of the
pain of gaining that wisdom ourselves, you know, or never
getting there. And I think that you know, you hear
the metaphor teach a man to fish, but it's like
(27:30):
you're not, this is an empowering technology, Like you're saying
I'm not you know, giving you a job that you
might lose or gain based on you know, macro market forces.
You're saying like, we're going to train you in the
job of the future. And you now, I mean, I
imagine these people are in the top earning percentiles in
Nigeria right if they're working with get hub or Headspace
or these these companies that you guys work with, well,
(27:53):
I would say that they that they are now that
so we were we were we were working with people
who were just starting out their career. But essentially that
was that's what we were saying to them is even
if you train with us in you know, Ruby on rails, uh,
let's say for example, that may not be around in
fifteen years. But the skill set that you build up,
(28:13):
the muscles that you build up, you know, of being
able to learn quickly and shift and change. We sought
out lifelong learners who had we had solved evidence in
their background of mastery. You know that that required themselves
and you know, hour after hour of chipping away at
a at a complex problem that those kind of skill
set would would serve them well. And so yes, that
(28:34):
was our our bet was we can find incredible problem
solvers whose brains are wired for the type of problem
that is software development. And then we find people that
are extremely you know, long term values and mission aligned.
And I can't think of a more important sector to
have virtuous people in when we look at you know,
(28:57):
our generation. I don't know what your grandma used to
tell you, but it was always like doctors and lawyers,
and that is you know, the past, like the future,
technologist will shape the future, and the decisions that they
make about technology platforms and tools, whether they are virtuous
or not, will have massive impact. And so that's what
we're looking for, you know, top top, top problem solvers
(29:19):
that loved and we're dedicated towards a life of technology
and that wanted to you know, really change the world
and hold certain values that play out through the technology
they build. You've now, you know, spent pretty much your
whole adult life thinking about this work and and dedicating
your time to this space. I'm very curious your thoughts
(29:39):
and like, you know, sort of the things that you know,
we can be leaning into right now that domestically, I
think UM, the application of artificial intelligence to UM sort
of job searching is something I'm actually very excited about
so at ADELA, we didn't have perfect tools, but over
(30:00):
and over again we looked at how applicants looked, you know,
in the application period, all the way through to how
they performed on client work, and we made assumptions about
what we thought would work and didn't work, and then
we got smarter and smarter and smarter by who performed
well on clients. And it wasn't necessarily what you would
think for a software developer. So, for example, social and
(30:22):
emotional intelligence is hugely important in remote client work. The
typical stereotype of a software developer in the States is
like moody, opinionated, where's their big headphones, doesn't want a
lot of input, And that is like false, that's utterly
false for what we found makes a great software developer.
So the application to different all these different groups coming
(30:44):
into the workforce today is that like, I don't want
to have to convince you that this person who was
in prison is also a great technologist, and I shouldn't
have to because they're sitting in front of a computer
screening coding, and what you should care about is the
quality of their code. And so if you can find
the skill sets and the things in a person's past
(31:04):
that will dictate if they're going to be good at
this or not. We can just make much smarter decisions,
you know about our workforces. A great praxi from one
of my team members by top top team members, a
guy named Evan Greenlow. He said, you know, like who
brings in a top soccer player, Like who's going to
bring in messy and be like, how do you feel
(31:25):
about your performance on the field, and do you feel
that you're a good team player? Like no one gives
a ship. They've been watching every kick, every pass that
he's made um for his entire life, and they know
how he's gonna perform into the future. And so there
are so many different jobs in the future that will
be just like that, where we can you know, we
(31:45):
can know by a way of a person performs that
it's it will be utterly merit based and it will overcome,
you know, some of the lack of a formal head degree,
art of the hustle will be right back after this
short break. Those skill jobs, you think that those are
(32:09):
more vocational in training versus like four year university or
are we going to see a new type of certification
that informs potential partners and employers of our skill sets.
Like where do you think this goes? Well? I think
the future belongs to certainly in the realm of technology.
I think it belongs to people that enjoy re upping
(32:30):
their skill set. Um. So that's kind of a you know,
not a complete answer to your question, but I do
think it's going to change so rapidly that people who
enjoy coming out of the fray and retraining for you know,
six months every three years are going to get the
benefit you know, of of part of the future of work.
(32:53):
I do I think there's a place for the four
year degree. Yes, I don't think it will. I don't
think we'll do away with it entirely, but I think
there will be you know, many many more entry points
to good paying jobs because of what you can prove
that you can build, not because of where you can
prove you got into for school. I think if you
can do something in a really scrappy way. On the side,
(33:15):
I love, for instance, for software developers. Now there are
application processes and systems where an employer can watch you,
you know, get a problem and get into just exactly
as you would. It's in their their computer system. But
you can look at what they look up on the
web and what they look up and get hub, and
how they build and how they problem solve. Um, it's
(33:37):
much more the real world than Okay, come up to
the white board and you know, and fill something out.
We need to understand how people's brain solve problems. That's
going to be a much better indicator of how they're
going to perform on your team than where they got
into college. So I don't have all the answers and
where the workforce is going to go, but the entry
(33:58):
points will be allowed more of a meritocracy and and
inevitably the workforce will get more diverse, more international, and
all those things are incredibly good things totally, and you know,
one of the keys for some it makes it a
little more difficult to manage in terms of like delivering
on people's interests. But you know, the more diverse the inputs,
the more complex and impactful the outputs. Like I I
(34:20):
agree with you that diversity is its own value. It's
not like some addendum thing one thing that this brings
to mind. I have a buddy who, uh, you know,
this is what I'm gonna tell talk about is like,
you know, trade secret from six years ago. So I'm
sure he's so far advanced now. But his name is
le rom Siegel, and he founded click Health, which like
one of the largest healthcare agencies in the world, and
(34:40):
they hire thousands of people on behalf of compounds. Right,
could be a startup or a professor at at you know, Pitzer,
could be you know, fighter right in a multibillion dollar
compound or whatever. And they'll hire the team and name
the drug and train the doctors and make the marketing
they and so so you're taking sometimes these these companies
from three to three hundred people through this process and um,
(35:01):
so they hire a lot of people, and I remember
this is this is you know a long he might
might even be longer ago. He was super excited about.
He's like some of the things that we figured out.
One when we interview people, we put a door that
takes you straight outside as close as possible to the
room that they're actually like doing the tests in, so
they have an easy option to just bounce and they
(35:22):
don't have to say good about anybody. And then uh,
you did. They would do the first test online, they'd say, Hey,
I mean like you could cheat if you wanted to,
But like the second test is in person, you actually
have to know this stuff in order to do this job,
so it doesn't really make sense to cheat. And then
and then the third thing was when you would get
there and you're in your room and you're in front
of the module, there was a board with twenty names
(35:43):
and extensions on it and they would say, hey, you
can hit up anybody on this board. It could be here.
It could be Miriam, it could be you know, it
could be Rachelle, it could be whoever about any question
you want. And here they're extensions, so it's actually one person.
There are two people that would be with those extensions,
and they were instructed give you the answer to anything
that you asked. I mean it's like who took advantage
(36:03):
of it, who collaborative and so so it can it
can source these new and this is you know, again
like ancient history. I'm sure there's people like yourself who
have even you know, more thoughtful, more you know, scalable
UM sorting methods. But I just I just I I
do agree with you that, like you know, especially for
certain things like we're talking about um. You know, like
(36:25):
there will be uh meritocraticization. And I think that the
key is having the building blocks, like if you weren't
you know, there's so many savage inequalities and nutrition and
in terms of how well your brain can function or
you know, the the the basis of education maybe that
you have so you did you did you learn how
to learn? So I wonder where we need to like
(36:46):
if we're thinking about this now, like I'm almost trying
to get you to put your you know, uh, your
heal the world Christine s asked, like traveling around the
planet hat on, Like, and I know you're there's still
so much you're doing with Adela, but I'm curious, like
where is the are some of these points we should
be focusing on. Yeah, I mean okay, so obviously that
the you know, geography that I know best is is
(37:08):
Sub Saharan Africa, and there, for example, ten years ago
we read all this stuff about you know, well, as
soon as they get the Internet, all these problems will
be solved. And that's just that is just false. So
one of the lessons of Vandela is that, like it is,
it's long term investment in people's learnings. It's making learning
a part of their job. Now we hired for people
(37:30):
that have a passion for learning and that they enjoy that.
But you still have to say, you know, of your
job forever is going to be learning and relearning and
re relearning, and do you you know, do you want
to commit to that? And so for you know, for
the parts of the world that desperately need the sort
of access, I would say, we need to get rid
(37:51):
of the pipe dream that we're going to lay the
fiber cable and people are just going to rise up
out of poverty. That is not going to be the case.
Like we need to invest heavily in and learning platforms
and giving people time and mentorship. And those of us
that have gone through our career path dedicating really being
mentors and helping people problem solve and it's just it's
(38:11):
time and exposure. So for software developers, we have extraordinary
tools out there. There's great tools out there. We just
need to get it to the right people in the
right places and then give them, you know, some time
and mentorship. So if you take women in technology, for example,
the two top reasons why they don't pursue careers in
in technology even in the States, but definitely in other
parts of the world is because they just don't believe
(38:34):
that there are jobs for them. They don't believe their
jobs because they don't see mentors, they don't see people
like themselves moving up. And it is happening, but we
gotta make that known to people and bring that next generation,
you know, up with us. So and the same thing
as the tools that we're building to train software developers online.
It's happening in so many different sectors. I mean, look
at what just happened in COVID. We never thought that
(38:57):
so many companies would believe in distributed work and that
that would be the way of the future. Well, it
turns out when that's all you got, you adapt pretty
freaking quickly. So now we know that you can, you know,
train for and do an enormous number of tasks in
a completely distributed fashion. And so we need to apply
ourselves to to taking that you know, expert training and
(39:21):
dispersing it evenly and equally. This is what I thought,
to you did very very well, so to you. They
were responsible for Georgetown's nursing program. They proved that the
people who learned nursing online learned it better than the
people who were on site at Georgetown. That's in that's insane,
but it just it form fits function. What are you
(39:41):
teaching in what way? Now? Of course everybody has to
go to a hospital and practice putting in needles and
you know, doing the things that you can only do
that our tactile. But there are other pieces of that
learning that's like, let's figure out how to teach it
the best with the best teacher that we now we
can absolutely can scale. We know the best time for people,
you know, time in the day for people to learn.
(40:03):
We can track how they solve problems. We can so
all of those things about learning a career path can
be now done more specifically online, and all those things
make it more diverse and more of a meritocracy. Yeah,
I'm with it, and I'm not techno utopianists. I don't
think that like technology by nature of being technology is
(40:23):
good for the world, and I don't think it will
save us all. But I do think that there's these
really interesting factors that get broken down, like these you know,
institutional disadvantages where someone on the other side of it
has a reason for you not having that thing, like
they have an economic interest in keeping things the way
they are right and so I think things like starlink,
(40:45):
where you know, globally, in the near future, you're gonna
have the Internet worldwide in some Saharan Africa that's better
than you know, many parts of Williamsburg. And and you know, simultaneously,
you know we're going to be moved thing to a
future where you know, we'll have autonomous vehicles, will have
even more. And I'm not saying this in a good way,
(41:06):
like I feel like my work now chases me to bed,
to breakfast, to the bathroom, to wherever we go. We
can work now we have a supercomputer in our pocket
in front of our face, like ten hours a day.
So you know, I imagine that you think about that.
You know that because because I know how much you
love the in person and how important it is for
you personally. Yeah, your thoughts, that's really a question. I think. No,
(41:29):
I think you're a hundred percent right. It is a tool,
and that tool could be used for good, it could
be used for evil, it can be neutral. And so
I think education is the great democratizer. But in the
new workforce, given you know, distributed tools, it's like anything else,
you can use it in a shitty, half asked way.
Or you can really build people's career paths. But it
(41:50):
requires deep dedication, and it requires using all the tools
in the right way over the right period of time.
But it is it's it's overtaking all of our lives.
I would just rather it overtake our lives in a
way that provide people great jobs, not just shitty entry
level work. In Nigeria, for example, Legos, Nigeria is the
most entrepreneurial place in the world. I would I think
(42:12):
you'd be hard pressed to find a more entrepreneurial group
of people. They can survive in a thousand different ways
and create their own small businesses. But that's not what
they want. They want global careers. They want to compete globally,
and they're they're damn sure impressive and can compete. But
what gives them that access, Like what gives the badass
software developer from Legos the opportunity to compete globally? Well,
(42:35):
I don't want them to all have to pick up
and go to Silicon Valley. In fact, I much rather
than have the inputs and everything that they've learned from
growing up in Legos that will make them more competitive
in a way if they're able to show that they
can use those same skills to build a career path.
That's so thoughtful. And you had mentioned women in technology,
and you know, I want to be respectful of your time,
(42:56):
and I really appreciate you being in the podcast. But
you know, you you very famously at least in our
generation have raised more or the most or in the
top you know, percentage of venture capital behind you know,
this idea with Endela and you know one it's just
I don't, I don't. That's not you know, the measuring
stick for you, I know, and for people who are thoughtful,
(43:18):
they're not like, oh yeah, that that's the ends that
get you to the means, right, That's the activity that
you hope results in the outcome. But it also means
that you built something incredibly investable, right. And I imagine
that you you know, dealt with some things that are
you know, utter bullshit and we're difficult, sexist, and I
also imagine you found you know, really great advantages or
(43:40):
perhaps you don't think gender played into it at all.
But I would just love to hear you know, your
your experience a little bit on that. Yeah, thank you.
You know, I have to say I had the best
business partner in the world. And so I think Jeremy
and I were an incredible duo and that part of
the ability to raise was based on really both of
our backgrounds, his cutting edge tech in the States and
(44:01):
my work on the continent um and more globally before that.
But yeah, it's still it's a yardstick that people used
to measure and so regardless of how I feel about it,
it is a way that people measure entrepreneurs. And so
I'm certainly out there trying to help women raise left
and right for all the reasons that we know that
they build great businesses. You know, venture capital funding follows
(44:22):
other VC funding, so we gotta get the you know,
money in the right in the right hands, and in
the right direction. So I feel very lucky. We had
incredible long term mission aligned investors, and we certainly kissed
a lot of frogs along the way, but didn't marry them.
I didn't have the horrendous experience that other female founders
(44:43):
and all female teams have, and I think that is
partially because Jeremy and I worked together, and so I'm
you know, I'm grateful for that, but I can't entirely empathize.
But what I can do is tell women who are
out raising today that we do not have to put
up with any of that bullshit in this is another
realm where I hope that the future is much more
(45:03):
merit based and based in data and what we can
you know, prove. But yeah, I had a really positive
experience and I feel very grateful that we're able to
raise that much, and so it's my responsibility now to
pay that forward. And I guess taking us out on that.
You know, I know that you're now focused once again
on really like because Indela of course shifted to the
(45:24):
like top quintile of developer talent, and you know, I
q that leads to these you know, world class um
engineering positions, and I know that you're working to increase
the ladder and enable more people that are in that like,
you know, more I guess normalized group that that also
need these opportunities. Yeah, so I'm thinking about all sorts
(45:45):
of things, but I think what and DELA is now
really operating in mid market for software developers, so folks
that that have some experience, and we're hiring from all
over the continent, and I think pretty quickly you'll see
us expand beyond that, where we've got to put some
more time and effort is on is on these entry
level folks and how we get them sustainable on ramps
(46:07):
to the global economy. And that's when I really look
back at what to you is doing. They found large
groups of employers. First they work backwards to perfect the training.
I think that really the labor force marketplace is still broken.
You have all these employers saying well, I need this
skill set, in this skill set, in this skill set,
and they're not talking to the community college down the
(46:29):
road and the university down the road. There are certainly
some examples of that, but I would like to get
back into a hyper focus on we can find the
skill sets. We can find the people. They don't need
a fancy pedigree. What they need is to prove that
they can do a specific work. And then to take
large scale employers that need specific skill sets and really
(46:50):
drag them into the education system and say, you know,
work together, tell them exactly what you need to see
so that you can hire these types of people. So
I think my next move will be back to the
highly highly motivated young person who's who's just starting out
on their career path and is willing to hustle, is
willing to work, but where there's you know, kind of
(47:11):
a whole pipeline of people that are invested in them
and then an employer at the at the end of that.
So we'll see. I'm excited. And in the meantime, I'm
like the biggest champion for all of the ADELA alumni now,
which is over a thousand people who are out there
building businesses and becoming tech leaders. So I'm just cheering
(47:31):
them on and helping to connect and move them up
in a thousand ways. I still work with our our
Advisory Council, which is an awesome group that helps to
advise the senior team. Jeremy knows he can call me
a day or night for anything that he needs, uh
And so it's wonderful to be in that position and
to be able to still support them, and I know
that they'll support me in whatever I decided to dive
(47:53):
into next. Well, thank you, Christina, incredible. Thank you so much, Jeff.
I will never forget the times working with with you
all in the Summit series. I had so much fun.
We did have fun. Well, enjoy the new baby, Enjoy Williamsburg.
Than you let us know. However, we can be supportive
of your work and thank you for listening out of
the hustle. For more podcasts for my heart Radio, visit
(48:33):
the i heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you
listen to your favorite shows.
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